South Korean police were investigating a hacking attack on an Internet provider that brought down the servers of three broadcasters and two major banks on Wednesday, and the army raised its alert level due to concerns of North Korean involvement.

The network provided by LG UPlus Corp. showed a page that said it had been hacked by a group calling itself the “Whois Team”, an unknown group. It featured three skulls and a warning that this was the beginning of “Our Movement”.

In this March 7, 2013 photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and distributed March 8, 2013 by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, uses binoculars to look at the South's territory from an observation post at the military unit on Jangjae islet, located in the southernmost part of the southwestern sector of North Korea's border with South Korea. Seven years of UN sanctions against North Korea have done nothing to derail Pyongyang’s drive for a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. They may have even bolstered the Kim family by giving their propaganda maestros ammunition to whip up anti-U.S. sentiment and direct attention away from government failures.
AP

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Servers at television networks YTN, MBC and KBS were affected as well as Shinhan Bank and NongHyup Bank, two major banks, the police and government officials said.

“We sent down teams to all affected sites. We are now assessing the situation. This incident is pretty massive and will take a few days to collect evidence,” a police official said.

Police and government officials declined to speculate on whether North Korea, which has threatened to attack both South Korea and the United States after it was hit with United Nations sanctions for its February nuclear test, was behind the hack.

North Korea has in the past staged cyberattacks on the world’s most wired country, targeting conservative newspapers, banks and government institutions.

South Korea’s military said it was not affected but raised its state of readiness in response.

None of South Korea’s oil refineries, power stations, ports or airports was affected.

The biggest attack by Pyongyang was a 10-day denial of service attack in 2011 that antivirus firm McAfee, part of Intel Corp., dubbed “Ten Days of Rain” and which it said was a bid to probe the South’s computer defences in the event of a real conflict.

Shinhan Bank, one of the financial institutions affected, said its servers were back up by 0700 GMT.

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